No one should expect either of them to know how to pull a greased string out of a cat’s ass.

“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”

These vampires never give up, do they. Just what are “payroll taxes”? They are the busimess contributions to SSI, Unemployment, and Health Care Plans…and McCain wants to strip these from employees…or drown the programs that are funded by them…and let the employers pocket the money.

Cutting SSI was tried by Bush in 2005-2007…it was an epic FAIL.
Destroying unemployment was part of McCain’s agenda when he ran for President…although he kept it very low key once the economy tanked.
And this idea of wiping out the employer contributions to Health Care…that’s long been a Republican mantra.

What McCain is saying is eseentially…lets destroy the New Deal programs…and give it to the management of massive corporations like Target, Best Buy, McDonalds, and Budweiser. And I’ll bet the CEO’s of these companies (like Frau Cindy Blucher McCain) will get a massive bonus for lobbying successfully the GOP.

There must surely be research somewhere that indicates the % of time devoted to commercials vs. % spent in actual content in any given period of time. I can truthfully say I have NEVER bought any product based on a TV commercial but there sure are a hell of a lot of things I will NEVER buy simply because of their stupid ads. :-(

i am utterly stumped by some of these problems, many of which probably will never will solved, really. politics is always going to be ebbing and flowing along mostly predictable channels. it’s frustrating to see where something’s heading, and not be able to help or hinder.

such is the nature of the beast.

I blame the MSM gurus whose main interest seems to be in stirring up conflict and bright shiny sparks enough to fill up time between commercials, and who seem not to care a whit about content, other than to serve their major shareholders.

Ehh, I don’t know. Isn’t that just the uglier flip side of unnecessary pork barrel spending?

Seems to me, neither is particularly desirable. Things will never be perfectly fair, especially in a sour economy, but I’d hope for some ground-level reasoning in the interest of serving the greater good, whatever and wherever.

I don’t mean to be criticizing Krugman because I love the man dearly for all the qualities you describe. I just desperately want him to find some way around all the horrible things you mention about other guests so that he can get his knowledge out to a wider audience…and there probably isn’t a really effective way to do it, given the atmosphere in the so-called news venues these days.

I think Obama knew exactly what would happen. He just allowed them to play it out for all to see. Good for him.